You Can't Beat It!

Virus On Tour - Dancing Is Her Love

2012-05-21T13:36:00.001-07:00

This is a groovy video from Virus On Tour. New style of finnish disco.
Check it out.

Starforce music video - Some cool retro synthesizer sounds from Finland

2012-04-21T02:57:00.000-07:00

I rarely write about anything new artists in the finnish scene because I try to concentrate on my own things too much. If you liked Miami Vice, old video games, old science fiction then you got to check out this music project. I just spotted this nice music project called Starforce from the Klubitus.org forums. Their sound is 80´s retro soundtrack and reminds a genre called space synth. video:

Visit their blog: http://synthetixmusic.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/feel-starforce.html

Starforce in Soundcloud

Read more about Space Synth genre

CD Baby mp3 music store on facebook

2012-03-23T08:04:00.003-07:00

Check out my new song store on facebook.

Jammie Thomas - Single Mother Loses To Big Record Labels -Fuck SOPA and ACTA

2012-02-25T03:19:00.002-08:00

RIAA is a discrace to humanity

Google Music. Only in USA ?

2011-12-18T03:28:00.000-08:00

There was an article in Digital Audio Insiderabout the Google Music service. I had a test by logging into my google account through Google Music page. By logging in into my (finnish) account I will get a blunt message showing "We're sorry. Google Music is currently only available in the United States"

It´s nothing new to digital music fans that big search engine names will release a music service such as Google. For example there has been digital music from indie artists for many years through Yahoo. The music page itself will get internet search results from artists with similar name. How about "Balkan Beat Box - Digital Monkey" and "Digital Beat Machines"

Now what´s the catch with Google for independent and bedroom musicians. They will sell music for similar price to iTunes. Selling point might be important because many of independent musicians just make music as a part time hobby and hardly sell any music at all. This is because it´s not for the money but the creativity part. Anyway there was some interesting comparison chart with three of the well known (not propably most paying off ones). I will look forward to have this service in Europe and in Finland too.

New features in Renoise. Video of 2.8 beta version

2011-12-14T11:11:00.000-08:00

There´s some cool new features in Renoise 2.8.
I have got the version 2.7 with many
VST because I like to be creative with traditional tracker
programming and not so comfortable with all in one
packages like Reason. However if you want there´s
Rewire option that allows you to wire Renoise with
Reason.

See all the features in Renoise page

Fighting against bad music and loudness wars

2011-12-10T04:25:00.000-08:00

Maybe you have heard this term called
anti music? Well if you don´t have then
you should learn what it means.

Just face it that music nowadays has become
more or less listenable. In terms of
enjoying the music it has become too
loud because of too heavy compression.
This might not just be the problem with
producers but also with big labels
that have decided whose next cd release will sound
louder. The hotness in this case not understood
as a market term but as a sound engineering
term when the dynamic range is compressed to
death so that the dynamic variation in a music
track will be very little because every instrument is just
so damn loud. Even whispering voice should be compressed
and maximised to hear it through the music.

In digital production the decibel
range is quite wide that gives the
opportunity for producers to use it
or in most cases abuse it.

Just take a glance of this graphics
that says more than thousand words.

Read The Story

Alien potatoes from outer space

2011-11-14T11:20:00.000-08:00

Yes you read it correctly. It´s Alien Potatoes from Outer Space.

Go to song page

Digital Beat Afex now only 0.5$ on @cdbaby

2011-08-15T11:39:00.001-07:00

http://bit.ly/pYU6ow

Buzy time. Reminder to join Digital Beat mailing list at Reverbnation.

2011-08-09T11:28:00.000-07:00

Only keeping you up to date and reminding you fans to join my mailing list for updates.

Just now I am really buzy with my life and new dayjob as 3d artist in Helsinki.
I hope to save some energy for weekend and for publishing new music online.
Too much new things and too lazy for publishing any new tracks at the moment.
I also have a dream of making my own abstract 3d music video animations.

New Digital Beat breakbeat track "Tuoni"

2011-04-09T15:38:00.001-07:00

Check out the latest track Tuoni in reverbnation and in youtube.
Quite melodic track with my trademark synth arpeggios.
Anyway have a listen to hear some new sounds.

I am sorry if some synth parts are messed up
in youtube video version due to video compression.

For full quality version head on to reverbnation
and check out the free 320kbps mp3 download in my
reverbnation artist page. It´s a full quality bitrate and
no excuses.

http://www.reverbnation.com/play_now/song_8119813

Reverbnation Fair Share - pennies coming in from ads - Get real

2011-04-05T10:07:00.000-07:00

There´s a little advertising program in Reverbnation
called Fair Share. It gives artist some money
depending of the traffic from placed ads.
Some artists including me are curious if it generates
any money or not. Well it does but very little.
However it´s free to join and you get free pennies
from your work. Still some artists out there like
to think that it would be possible to make living by
generating income from this kind of ad traffic programs
are naive.

With my statistics it´s giving only some pennies
when some artists have been claiming that of it giving out
some dollars between 5 to 10 dollars a month.
I still cannot believe because I have not seen their
statistics. However I have received some pennies
per month and have been artist since 2008.
During that time I´ve almost received
41 FairShare Payments of total $5.57.

Get real and manage your business yourself and stop living in
your daily pipedreams.
Any bands should know they should have
a good management agency to book more gicks. The artist
can also be just another bedroom musician.
This kind of artist really should be making
some intro and background music for games, television and
broadcast and get royalties this way.
Nowadays it´s not really easy to make living with legal downloads.
Most listeners usually only want to listen music for free or with low payment when streaming online music. Ads and ad programs will never pay your online music.
However you have to pay for music storage if you want to upload
more music.
On the positive side youtube and social networks like myspace music, soundcloud, and bandcamp are now making some lesser known artists more visible in the Internet. Also Spotify is a free and legal music application which has been available for a good amount of time. Spotify will generate some low amount of royalties but for me it´s generating plays all the time.

It´s not the money in the Internet it´s the artist visibility in various platforms.
It´s also possible to sync between reverbnation and other third party websites such as myspace.

Lesson learned: Forget about the ad programs and get out of your room into the reality!

For visibility´s sake please visit my pages and stream my music and share
with your friends. Thank for your time and goodspeed! :-)

Visit my reverbnation page:
http://www.reverbnation.com/digitalbeat

Visit Hitlantis:
http://www.hitlantis.com/#/digital-beat

Open Digital Beat Spotify playlist

Great psytrance from Russia - Dissociactive

2011-02-05T04:53:00.000-08:00

album name: Total Transformation
by Dissociactive

Check out this great sounding psytrance album Total Transformation by Dissociactive.
Artist name is Vyacheslav Iskanyan.

This is a genuinely fresh air for psychedelic trance genre. I have to mention that I am not a very intense follower of any specific genre it´s only that I happened to listen a shoutcast channel on one spanish rave community today in Ning. Of course I rarely even listen to shoutcast. Anyway this really picked my interest right in the beginning.
Just like the cover art makes very clear this is a pure musical piece of art by a sonic wizard.

Unfortunately what is missing from the current psytrance music is a good and interesting groove. This is not just simple to create with common monotonic psytrance bass but with a good combination of different rhythmic percussive sounds. Also with textured arpeggiated synth sequences. This is hard to describe if you have not listened Total Transformation. Some songs are much more organic than others. For example Bioreaction has got some really interesting stuff and the bassline is varied nicely. There´s good headspace with ambient pads on the background.
The whole album is perhaps more close to oldschool goa trance than most recent psytrance albums.

You are also given the opportunity to listen the album for free online in Bandcamp page. Anyway it´s not very expensive if you buy a download for only 3 euros for the full album download or just 7 euros for the download and album. The shipping was just 3 euros worldwide. It´s digipack limited edition only of 500.
I heartily recommend for you to buy the album not just listen online. :-)

http://shop.sunstation.ru/album/total-transformation

File-Sharing Site Operators Sentenced

2011-01-21T07:47:00.000-08:00

Finnish music industry has come to a dead end.
It seems very much a sad way to try to make
end with music file-sharing. File sharing itself
did not make any profit for the two sentenced
people. This is more like a juridical murder
because human rights are violated.

File-Sharing Site Operators Sentenced

edit

Satan and Kraftwerk plays electropop - The Knife

2011-01-16T12:58:00.000-08:00

This electropop sounds like Satanic circus music together with Kraftwerk. The vocals in some parts are male and in some parts female.
The sound is both dark and twisted but not too melancholic because there´s lot of fast melodies and timbrals.
I find it very odd sounding first but fun with twisted synthlines and arpeggios
which reminds me of 8-bit videogames and industrial synthpop.

If you want to read more be sure check out this Walrus music blog about
the band called "The Knife". Yes they are swedish. :-)

http://walrusmusicblog.com/blog/the_knife_swedens_creepiest_band/

The music video - "We Share Our Mother's Health - The Knife"

The Knife - Live - Forest Families

Super Laser Racer game music credits - Kimmo /Digital Beat

2011-01-11T11:51:00.000-08:00

I was just googling just for fun to check if there´s any
games using my music. Funnily I happened to find out
that one game Super Laser Racer had 2 of my tracks
as race music (in game).

Video music: Dynamedion - Heavy Engineering

SLR in Youtube

Original album with my artist name Digital Beat is Dark Sun.
Track names are:
Digital Beat - Fusion Drive
Digital Beat - Ripple Wire

You can buy the album here

http://digitalbeat.bandcamp.com/album/dark-sun
If you are a "poor loser" like me then you can get album for free. There´s few left. :-)
Follow this link

The tracks are royalty free music in Shockwave Sound with my
composer name Kimmo Rinta-Pollari.

Usually I don´t follow very much who uses my music and where because
it´s all handled by Shockwave Sound. Anyway I want to give big thanks
to game developers at New Star Games and Bjorn Lynne at Shockwave Sound.

I am also a game geek so I had to buy this game. It´s rather difficult with arrow keys
but I still have to try it with real gamepad.
So here´s the screenshots from the main menu to show the credits.
This is just for blatant self promotion and marketing.

Kimmo Rinta-Pollari - Fusion Drive

At the end I still want to add this link for a game review on the test freaks
site. Read review here

Game purchase page (I am not in co-operation with game company)
http://store.steampowered.com/app/44100/

Digital Beat at Hitlantis

2010-08-23T10:46:00.001-07:00

At last I had time to upload my tracks into Hitlantis
music service. There is Afex single track and
Dark Sun album. Total of 11 tracks are now available for listening.
I might add more tracks later on.
Happy listening. :-)

The link:
http://www.hitlantis.com/#/digital-beat

Most of DJ music is total crap - Beatport sucks

2010-08-14T12:09:00.000-07:00

Inspired by this blog about Beatport

I personally think that most of the trend dance music is
total crap. Even if it is well produced and sounding good the
value of the music as a listenable music can be very bad.
Not only beatport is selling mass marketed bulk dance but
there´s some artists like Scooter who are proud to produce
euro rave which is really bad sounding commercial dance music.

Typically the mass marketed electronic dance music is
made for large ignorant masses of people who will categorize the
music as techno no matter what subgenre it really is. Electro, breakbeat, breaks,
drum and bass will be gategorised just all as dance or just techno.

Generally dance music had been always made and marketed with the popularity of artist and lead synths/hooks appearing. It should be appealing if it´s just for the big masses. Music TV made the first big change in artists popularity. Also some of the commercial artists noticed this and brought all kind of mediocre shit around.
Later in the millennium new online dance music stores made unknown artists better known to big masses of consumers and dj´s. The music has not to be good if it´s presented in either TV or some well known online music outlet. At the end a good musical taste can tell if it´s another beutifully wrapped shit track on a silver plate.

Back to Beatport it´s only raw numbers and money not really about good music. Beatport however seems to have some control of what amount the label has to sell in order to keep it on their store. 2 years ago in 2008 beatport even culled out some labels because they did not sold enough. Some underground music can be too different for a DJ and chart success?

How can any DJ music be good ever?

I have always preferred more original online stores like Psyshop with interesting and innovative artists such as Psycho Punk, DJ Tsuyoshi and some quite dark psytrance labels like Shaman Films. This music is perhaps not for everyone but at least it´s not for the ignorant consumer masses of music. Psytrance is the most innnovative and underground sounding music at the moment. I am not talking about Infected Mushroom because after becoming more popular their sound became more pop sounding. It´s not very innovative at the moment as some of many upcoming psytrance artists in the scene. But at least I.M. is popular and not any typical dance group.

Artists worth to mention in Psyshop

Psycho Punk

http://www.psyshop.com/shop/CDs/pcr/pcr1cd005.html

Myspace

ITP (Spanish guitars meet Psytrance & Oriental music)

http://www.myspace.com/iiitttppp

There´s some naturally amazing new talent also in myspace who actually give out their music for free. This duo which I personally found interesting is a psytrance duo from Israel that I already found in 2008 in myspace.
I hate when how some people prejudice everything by the politics and war in Israel. I have begun to dislike cold and cynical people even more because I know artists in Israel will hate the war and killing and still try to manage their music career and creativity in their unstable nation. People who are honest and with heart in their music should be all respected no matter what.

Digital Beat - Afex - mp3 single album release

2010-08-02T13:47:00.000-07:00

New mp3 single album release at cdbaby.
Digital Beat – Afex
Release day: 16th of July 2010

New logo design for Digital Beat and label Digital Beat Music

2010-02-14T04:52:00.000-08:00

New logo designs for Digital Beat (artist) and Digital Beat Music the label.

Digital Beat logo

Digital Beat Music label logo.

Digital Beat at Bandcamp

2010-02-14T04:50:00.000-08:00

Just reminding I have music also at bandcamp.

http://digitalbeat.bandcamp.com/

Vtech - Inertia EP review

2009-12-23T10:50:00.001-08:00

Vtech is a Drum and Bass producer from Finland. He makes dark and fast paced sounding
Drum and Bass with some occasional ragga vocals.

First track Gangsters Anthem name implies for something about Gangster Rap but offers something very different what is expected. Vtech appears to use street talk phrases in many of his track names.
The track opens with a tiny synth melody and filtered breakbeats and after intro in 0:45 the gangster vocals come in. This track uses low bass only sparingly and nice distorted reece is coming quite late in 2:00 mark.
The mixing and dynamics works very well and usually in drum and bass scene some artists albums are either too loud or compressed to hell. The dynamics mix is both listenable and I believe it sounds just excellent with real PA on the dance floor.
Gangster combines an industrial ambient background with ripping reece leads and is very successful at that.

World Is a Ghetto has got nice breaks style with ragga vocals. Ragga vocals are sung by Ft. Mc Jahvice. His vocals suit perfectly for the Drum and Bass. Could not be any better than this. The track has got also some occasional acid synthlines. What a perfect addition to any breakbeat or Drum and Bass DJ stash.

Third track Black Ice style somehow reminds me of the classic and dark TeeBee tracks.
Very cool rhythmic reece bass is at its best when served with warm and distorted effects with some frohmage* (*editors note: Not sure if the produced uses Frohmage filtering. Just a personal note.) filtering to give listener a maximum drum and bass enjoyment. I am not familiar with origins of the speech department of this track but it surely gives some serious creeps in spine with some hysteric female screams and speech. Around 3:20 is very emotionally intensive with the "horror movie" genre. The track is very well mixed, layered and enjoyable to listen with headphones without head exploding.

The most industrial and eerie sounding track is the last track called Demise.
The ambience is propably the most interesting in this track of the whole bunch. I am able to find myself in a movie theme for a while with some swirling pads and other interesting sub fx. Let´s not forget the drum programming that is perhaps the most "junglistic" especially on the outro part. The outro kind of drum programming style makes me convinced that the producer has listened at least Goldies tracks. I still miss this kind of drum parts in other parts of this track. Anyway this was the most cinematic track on this EP.

Visit Vtech myspace

Buy Vtech Inertia EP

Tenori-on - an interesting interactive electronic music device

2009-12-21T11:40:00.000-08:00

in picture: designer of the Tenori-On, Toshio Iwai

I found this interesting electronic music device from a "if its hip it´s here" design blog.
You might have seen those ableton touch pads but this is much more advanced.
Tenori-On is made by Yamaha. It and has 16 control layers and you are able to create different cool light patterns onto it´s light matrix by pushing and activating led input buttons on the fly. The light matrix is 16x16 with is for both user input control and interactive light show with different modes.
There´s 6 different modes. The first might be familiar for those who have used some software studio sequencer of hardware sequencer. It´s the score mode where
user can enter notes in realtime and it is looping around. Just like in fruity loops but this is hardware. Ok let´s forget about fruity loops because this is a real electronic music instrument.

Read more about features with example videos:
http://www.global.yamaha.com/tenori-on/features/

Jim O'Rourke video

There´s a SD memory card slot which can be used in same way as in common digital cameras and PSP etc. digital electronic devices to exchange data. You can load up your own samples from your computer into a memory card.
Still this device with cool design costs around 1200 $ so it´s not friendly for a wallet but I think it´s not just any music device from your local music instruments store.

Interesting combination with live playing cello and Tenori - On by the band called The Books. This band uses device in live performance. I like their style of acoustic contemporary electronic music with traditional instruments.

Listen and view their live performance here:

"The books" video

Pics:

Celldweller - Wish Upon A Blackstar Chapter 02 - "audiowise review"

2009-12-16T14:02:00.000-08:00

I have produced music myself over 18 years and listened even more. Nowadays and every year it seems that producers just want to make everything sound louder and louder. And what is even worse, loud all or most of the time. In my opinion Klayton has got some great talent as a producer but that´s not the issue here.
The problem really is that in the album Wish Upon a Blackstar chapter 02 the
guitars are compressed into full all the time. It´s very painful to listen that kind of guitar riffs.
Guitar struts and riffs with proper dynamics would sound so much better.
I must say I am not an audio purist at all but I just like well mixed and produced music. Not compressed to death.

For example: Klayton producing style is bit like with Metallicas latest album "Death Magnetic" and fans and audio engineers have told the Guitar Hero version was much more listenable because it was almost 10dB quieter than the album version.
Read an article by Ian Shepherd here: http://mastering-media.blogspot.com/2008/09/metallica-death-magnetic-sounds-better.html

You don´t have to impress listener all the time like in some big movie soundtrack or in tv commercial where the audio is often compressed heavily to "wow the listener".
Please bring back the dynamics into music and save my and other peoples hearing ability.

Other than that the first chapter was really enjoyable but the second chapter is disappointing because there´s no music which can be listened to through the loudness.
Despite of the title "Louder than Words" has got much better mix with the guitars and overall production is very much better thought and laid out.
If the same trend continues I will not waste my money on this loudness garbage. Louder is better but too loud is bad. :shock:

Celldweller - Wish Upon A Blackstar Chapter 02 (Deluxe Edition) (MP3 Album) -review

2009-12-10T02:59:00.000-08:00

Follow this to album store page

"Eon" it´s trying too hard and it´s almost painful to listen to. It´s totally overproduced and too loud for most of the time. You don´t have to compress everything into full. Less is more. Same thing with track "The best it´s gonna get".
I was bit disappointed for this album. The first chapter was much more listenable. I think Klayton should learn to produce music not to kill his fans ears. I gave it only two stars.

The first chapter was much more listenable and I really enjoyed that.
http://www.fixtstore.com/product/4766/Celldweller---Wish-Upon-A-Blackstar-Chapter-01-(Deluxe-Edition)-(MP3-Album)

I think most of the modern music is killing the dynamics.

read more:
http://turnmeup.org/index.shtml